


Patroness of Roses

by AMarguerite



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 14:44:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3212963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Empress Joséphine prepares for the arrival of Lung Tien Lien in Paris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patroness of Roses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoogyNoober](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoogyNoober/gifts).



Napoleon’s latest letter had so utterly confused Joséphine that her daughter Hortense was obliged to ask, “Are you attending, mama?”

“I know you do not like Louis, but you have two sons by him now,” said Joséphine, absently. “He cannot require more of you.”

Hortense looked heavenward. “I know I complain about Louis often enough, but just then I was saying it is your turn.”

Joséphine put down the letter beside her on the rail, to pick up her abandoned billiard cue. She glanced over her shoulder at the door and said, to the dusty messenger waiting there, “I thank you for your pains in delivering this message. Please, rest and refresh yourself, and send for anything you need.”

“Have you any message to return to the Emperor, Empress?”

“Not yet,” said Joséphine, lining up her cue. She was not as good a player as Hortense, but she was a deliberate one. She choose her shots as strategically as she had once chosen her lovers (though that time was past; as much as she loved Napoleon, they had both hurt each other beyond repair by holding such opposing views on the subject early in their marriage). “You must take good care of your health captain. Pray, rest. I will send for a courier when I can satisfy the Emperor on every particular.”

She said it gently, in her usual low, smoothly modulated tones, so that it seemed the gentlest, the most gracious of suggestions, for all that it was a command. The messenger bowed and marched off.

“Hortense, make sure the door is closed.”

At the sound of the lock, Joséphine said, calmly, “We are remodeling.”

“Oh? Did Papa seize more art?”

“No,” said Joséphine, adjusting her position. “A white Celestial has defected from China.”

This meant little to Hortense; she leaned her hip on the side of the table and said, “Oh! It will be good to have another heavyweight. Maybe Papa will make Louis captain her, and send him off to Germany.”

“Celestials are ancient breeds, with wisdom and abilities unknown in our training grounds,” Joséphine read aloud. “Only Emperors are fit companions for them. Murat says that applying her methods would provide us with a sixfold increase in weight of metal thrown, and tenfold increase in supply for the dragons. As it is, feeding dragons with grain, and using them to carry artillery as well as to fight, we have doubled our supply, our speed, and our efficacy.”

Hortense’s eyebrows had been slowly creeping up to her hairline at this, and by the end, she was almost slack-jawed. “Doubled their numbers?” she asked. “And an expected sixfold increase? Do you want me to find out from Caroline if Murat really said as much?”

“You have anticipated me,” said Joséphine, with a smile. “But you are not to let Caroline Bonaparte-Murat know that we are remaking all Paris.”

Hortense frowned. “Mama, I thought you meant Malmaison, not Paris!”

“Malmaison as well,” said Joséphine. She glanced at the letter. “We must give Madame Lien some of the comforts to which she has been accustomed-- I will send the plans and figures for her pavillion by the evening. I hope you will begin construction immediately. I--” she cut off before she could read Napoleon’s customary-- and still slightly embarrassing closing line of, ‘I kiss you everywhere’ and looked up at Hortense. “He has specified the Tuilleries gardens are to be remodeled.”

“Then why Malmaison?” asked Hortense. She gestured about them, as if to spread wide her arms and embrace the house around her. “This is your home, mama, and all your lovely gardens-- it is such a delicious spot, I do not wish to see it crushed beneath a dragon’s foot!”

“Only Emperors are fit companions for Celestials,” murmured Joséphine. Companion-- a word she had never before heard used with dragons. Captain, certainly. Almost exclusively. But companion?

Since being imprisoned during the Terror, Joséphine had become very good at recognizing and allying herself with powerful individuals. But she did not wish to speak so calculating a thing aloud, particularly since other thoughts had already crowded in-- of her overwhelming relief, like a sigh in her soul, that Napoleon was obsessed with a dragon and not another lady-in-waiting; of her growing sympathy for any creature with a home it could not return to, halfway around the world; of her sudden homesickness for the vibrant colors of the flowers in her childhood home in Martinique; of her curiosity about a dragon who could change all Paris-- all France, even.  

“The house itself will not change, or the gardens, very much,” said Joséphine, returning her attention to her shot. “I have been wishing to buy the plot next door for some time now. We may construct a pavillion fit for Madame Lien there.”

“You are the most horrible spendthrift, mama,” Hortense said, indulgently. “But I suppose you know what you are about?”

Joséphine did not reply. She pulled back her cue and shot. The red and white thirteen ball fell into the corner pocket. “I do.”

 

***

 

The plans arrived while Joséphine was asking Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine to sit in her anteroom. He perched somewhat uneasily on the backless stools Joséphine had positioned around her small, round table, and interested himself in the long band of classical figures painted on the walls. Joséphine read the letter carefully before handing Monsieur Fontaine the dense packet of figures and drawings.

“I agree with the Emperor,” said Monsieur Fontaine, carefully laying out the drawings, “a Chinese pavillion behind the cedar groves, overlooking your rose gardens-- you will have the most splendid outdoor balls, Your Majesty.”

Joséphine carefully folded up her letter and put it on the table, before folding her hands on top of it. Monsieur Fontaine seemed to have some reservation he was not voicing, and he opened and closed his mouth twice before bending his head over the sketches. She said, gently, “Continue, Monsieur Fontaine. I rely upon your advice. You have so wonderfully remodeled Malmaison as it is.”

“As it is,” said Monsieur Fontaine, slowly, “I wonder if you will need a pavillion quite so large? Even if you were to have five hundred people, it would not--”

Joséphine hid a laugh behind her hand, so that Monsieur Fontaine would not see her bad teeth. “Ah, if it were to be used for balls, Monsieur Fontaine, then I should take your advice. But this is a model of dragon pavilions found in China.”

Monsieur Fontaine had no fit response. He looked back down at the drawings and shifted them around; picked up a list of measurements and squinted at them; and said, at last, “You will need more land than you currently possess, Your Majesty.”

“You shall have it,” said Joséphine. “Now, Monsieur Fontaine, you must build one of these pavilions by the house, overlooking the rose garden, and another in the gardens of the Tuileries. Can this be accomplished in a month?”

“I have no experience in building these,” he hedged.

“You may make modifications to the one here,” said Joséphine, “as long as you do not sacrifice any comfort in the construction. Begin work on the one at Malmaison as soon as you can gather the materials. The one at the Tuileries must be exact, according to the plans.”

Monsieur Fontaine was too well-bred to question her, but Joséphine knew he was not too well-bred to gossip. She leaned forward, one hand still on her letter, the other close to where Monsieur Fontaine’s hand was on the table, and said, “Monsieur Fontaine, you have so wonderfully ensured the comfort of myself and my family. I could think of no architect better to create a home suitable for a dragon so worshiped in China she is the first of her kind to set foot in France. They are almost mythical creatures, these Celestials. According to legend--” A legend Voltaire had entirely made up, to prove a point about the Holy Roman Empire, but no matter “--they appear only to Emperors.”

“And... the Emperor... has acquired one,” said Monsieur Fontaine, faintly.

“Indeed.” Joséphine smiled, gently and sweetly, and continued on in the same tone she had used when informing Monsieur Fontaine that Napoleon had gotten her a black swan to live in her fountain, “A remarkable creature. We must ensure her comfort. I am told she is so intelligent, instituting but two of her reforms allowed the army to move thirty miles in one day.”

Such a number was not to be believed, but still, it was real. Joséphine half-fancied she could feel the incredible number under her fingertips, through the parchment of the letter.

“Thirty--thirty miles,” choked out Monsieur Fontaine. “In one day!”

“Indeed, Monsieur. Infantry and artillery.”

Monsieur Fontaine gaped.

Joséphine drew back, and folded her hands again over the extraordinary letter. “Naturally, I can rely on your discretion.”

“Naturally,” he echoed.

“And, naturally, you understand why it is so important--”

“Yes.”

“The dragon is very far from home,” said Joséphine, thinking, with a sweet melancholy, of her native Martinique, “so she must have something familiar about her. The poor, dear creature has sacrificed so much for the Empire.”

“I will-- of course-- my poor best--” Polite phrases bubbled forth in spurts, like water from a fountain newly built, but he eventually managed a coherent stream: “But it will take much longer than three months, Your Majesty. There is a shortage of laborers. The levée-en-mass for the Grande Armée has--”

Joséphine was more dubious on this point, but she said, “The Emperor has suggested using dragons for all your heavy lifting.”

Poor Monsieur Fontaine had not been so astonished, nor been so frequently astonished in his entire life. “Dragons,” he repeated. “Dragons to... construct a building.”

“They are extremely strong creatures,” said Joséphine, “and the Emperor is sending to you a captain who has supervised construction of a barracks during the Austrian campaign.”

“I... see....”

He did not, and sent a very panicked secretary the eight miles from the Tuileries to Malmaison, to report that a small company of dragons had deposited a significant portion of what had once been Germany’s Black Forest in the middle of Paris.

Joséphine quickly signed the paper her lawyer presented to her and said, hurriedly, “Yes-- and rush it through, it appears we must begin construction on the land as soon as possible. The materials have already arrived.”

“There was also-- oh lord!” The lawyer shrank back with a yelp; a light blue and gray Poux-de-Ciel was tapping on the window of Joséphine’s library with one claw. Monsieur Fontaine’s secretary yelped, “There-- there is another one!”

“We must accustom ourselves to dragons,” said Joséphine, though she, too, had been considerably startled. “With the army in the east, we must rely upon dragon power to maintain the strength of our Empire.”

The Poux-de-Ciel had no rider, and was seated on its back legs. It held what looked like a burlap sack in its right forepaw. This it waved at Joséphine.

“It seems to wish to speak with you, Your Majesty,” said the lawyer, faintly. “Shall I send for your guard, or your ladies?”

Joséphine’s ladies were no doubt already peering out the windows at the dragon. She was about to say something to that effect when the sack slipped and Joséphine saw three pink roses with yellow centers, surrounded by halos of bright green leaves. At once, Joséphine pulled a Kashmir shawl about her shoulders and went out into the garden.

“Are you the Empress?” asked the Poux-de-Ciel, eagerly.

“I am,” said Joséphine, inclining her head.

“With the Emperor’s compliments, Your Majesty,” said the Poux-de-Ciel said, proudly. It shook off the burlap sack to reveal a wild rosebush. “I seized it in the Black Forest, and the Emperor said you would like it.”

“Indeed I do,” said Joséphine, warmly. “I am very fond of roses. I have a whole garden of them. Would you like to come with me, and put these wonderful roses you have found with the others?”

The little Poux-de-Ciel was almost mad with delight at this show of favor, and pranced around Joséphine like an affectionate housecat. Her alarm ebbed from her. Dragons were hardly so threatening as she had been led to believe.

Her guards were more seriously alarmed, and did not move their hands from the pommels of their swords the entire time Joséphine walked in her garden with the little Poux-de-Ciel, relaxing only when the Poux-de-Ciel had finished digging and had planted the rosebush.

Madame de Rémusat, Joséphine’s confidant and chief lady-in-waiting, had ventured out, and was persuaded to introduce herself to the Poux-de-Ciel. She declined its offer of a ride, however.

“I thought dragons only talked to their captains,” she said, when the Poux-de-Ciel had winged away. “But I have never seen a dragon on its own so close before.”

‘You will see more, soon enough,’ thought Joséphine.

 

***

  
  


The rose gardens at Malmaison were famous-- and rightfully so. It was Joséphine’s ambition to gather together all the roses of the world in one place, so that they might be studied, yes, but so that they might also be enjoyed. She often escaped from the duties and worries of office in botany. She kept an informal catalog of all her roses, cultivated them, took notes on them, gave seedlings to other interested gardeners. Roses were simple to manage. They never pretended to be anything than what they were, and remained remarkably straightforward no matter how one crossbred or arranged them. They unfurled their petals, showed their thorns, and breathed forth exquisite perfume.

One corner of her garden was devoted to flowers from her native Martinique, and these she visited more often than the others. She was directing the head gardener on which of the roses to move into the greenhouse for the winter when the little Poux-de-Ciel fluttered down.

“You are welcome again, to Malmaison,” said Joséphine, as her pug barked itself into an asthmatic frenzy. “Fortuné! Be polite. Madame Lannes, pray take Fortuné inside.”

“You have got a pavilion here as well!” the little dragon exclaimed. “Madame Lien said there was only to be one in Paris.”

“The Emperor is often here,” said Joséphine. “I wish Madame Lien to be comfortable.”

Monsieur Fontaine’s secretary was clinging to the Poux-de-Ciel’s back. He tumbled off the dragon inelegantly.

“Your master is overseeing the work at the other end of the garden,” said Joséphine. She flicked her gaze to one of her guards, who at once went over to help the secretary to his feet. “Have you brought him more plans-- oh, what is this?”

The secretary had been carrying a long roll of paper; it had fallen with him, and unfurled before Joséphine’s feet. On it were strange black lines.

“They were all over the frame of the pavilion, Your Majesty,” said the secretary.

“I think they are Chinese characters,” said Monsieur Fontaine, when he arrived. “The pavilion was covered, did you say? My, my, I had no idea there were so many exiles from China in this city.”

“Find out who they are,” said Joséphine, examining the tidy brushwork. “I must know what this means, and I must have some for the pavilion at Malmaison.”

Most of the people putting up banners appeared to be sailors, but there were also two merchants and their servants, and a silversmith and his wife, who limped through Joséphine’s antechamber on tiny, bound feet. The silversmith had the best French, and explained, a little confusedly, that he had been the servant of a French Jesuit in China.

“But did you write this?” asked Joséphine, gesturing at two of her ladies-in-waiting. They spread out the banner over two tables.

“No, that was Moy,” said the silversmith, gesturing to the tea merchant. “It is a welcome banner. We heard there was a Celestial coming.”

Joséphine hid her smile behind her fan. “There is. Will you make more of these?”

Moy the tea merchant was extremely happy to do so, and even offered her a special discount on a crate of oolong. Joséphine accepted his terms, and the silk merchant’s terms for silk drapes, and the silversmith’s terms for a sapphire and crystal diadem Joséphine had designed.

“But make it with rubies, instead of sapphires,” Joséphine said, thinking of Lien’s coloring. “And silver-- yes, silver. Bring me some designs for silver jewelry for her.”

“You shall go into debt again,” Hortense said, when they were putting Hortense’s children to bed.

“We cannot skimp on a Celestial,” argued Joséphine.

“Why go to such trouble for a dragon?” insisted Hortense, locating her elder son’s favorite hussar from a boy of toy soldiers.  “Here you are, Louis-Charles. Sweet dreams, my little prince.”

“I want to see the dragon,” he insisted.

“She is not yet here,” said Joséphine, tucking him into bed. “But at the rate your grandfather is winning battles, she will be here any day.”

  
  


***

 

It was far too noisy and bright for midnight, thought Joséphine, roused suddenly from her sleep, by a banging door and a shout of, “Joséphine!”

This was always Napoleon’s way, Joséphine thought, in the irritable, transitory state between sleep and wakefulness. He did not realize how much time and money was necessary to maintain his state. He was too quick, at times.

“Joséphine!”

The bed curtains were abruptly pulled back. Joséphine’s pug Fortuné yapped incessantly from the end of the bed.

“Out!”

Joséphine felt the weight of the dog vanish and heard the door shutting.

“Joséphine, are you awake?”

“Now I am,” she replied, pushing herself up and stretching with languid grace. She felt, rather than saw Napoleon’s admiring glance, and felt a sense of calm satisfaction that her reign had not been challenged while he was away. It felt like putting down a burden she had not known she’d carried to have Napoleon near her again. “I did not expect you until tomorrow evening my Emperor. I am glad to see you.”

She extended her hand to him, gracefully as one of the roses unfurling in her garden. “Shall I show you?”

Napoleon was in a good mood; he caught her hand and kissed it. “No, not yet. Come, I wish to show you something. Ah! And I seized some rosebushes for you from Cologne-- I do not think you have these kind.”

Joséphine was extremely touched; she squeezed Napoleon’s hand. “I can see rosebushes much better in the daylight.”

“You do not wonder at how quickly I returned?”

“I did,” said Joséphine, beginning to feel some misgivings.

“Then come. Lien asked to meet ‘the only civilized person in my domain.’”

“I cannot come to her in my nightgown if she has described me as civilized!” Joséphine exclaimed. She tossed aside the bedclothes and rang for her maid. “We had-- Hortense composed a new march for her, and there is a feast prepared, and fireworks--”

“She has been camping with us, she longs only for the comfort of her pavilion.”

Joséphine did not think this in the least true, from what she had learnt of Celestials. It would be an insult not to receive Lien with all the ceremony that was her due. Not for the first time, Joséphine regretted that Napoleon had no instruction in the courtly ways in which she had been trained since childhood. “I think they have a different notion of comfort in China. I wish Madame Lien to feel welcome in her new home. She has given up so much for you, I wish only for her to be satisfied in every particular of her choice.”

“My tender-hearted Joséphine,” Napoleon teased, tweaking her ear and deranging her curl papers. “Has there ever been an empress more gracious?”

Joséphine began to feel a little better about the debts she had accumulated in the preparations for Lien’s arrival. Napoleon was in an extremely good mood, for he even said, “And I am well pleased with your son. I think him the ablest of all my relations. He was second after Murat to orchestrate an attack using Lien’s new aerial tactics.”

“I am so pleased Eugène was of use to you,” said Joséphine, with real pleasure.

“I am glad I made him a prince. He is a better one than these Habsburg fools who tried to march against me.” Napoleon had been striding about her room and found a diaphanous gold scarf draped over one of the red and gold chairs around the curved walls of Joséphine’s bedchamber. “Wear this scarf in your hair à la Creole. I remember how I used to dream about your hair à la Creole when I was a general in the Armée d’Italie!”

Joséphine smiled. “Hair à la Creole is with a white scarf, my emperor.”

“Do not wear white. It is a color of mourning in China.”

It was a pity the fashion was almost entirely for high waisted white dresses. Joséphine sighed and pulled her hair out of all her curl papers. She reached for the diaphanous gold scarf and used it to tie up her hair as she had done back in the ‘90s, when she’d had no household to speak of, save her two children, and an odd little Corsican her old lover Barras had pushed towards her. Napoleon was rifling through her clothes press, teasing her on all the new gowns she had acquired since he left, and pulled out a long-sleeved gown of rose pink satin, with a gold satin ribbon around the high waist. The ends of the ribbon dangled down the front, just to the top of the band of gold embroidery about the hem.

“Like the roses I sent you from the Black Forest,” he said, approvingly.

“That is why I had it made,” said Joséphine, dusting rice powder over her face in record speed. “I like to have reminders of you about me, always.” But she could not keep up flattery, not when there was so much to do-- she transitioned with a sweet, “Shall I ring for something for you? You must be hungry. I always have a Camembert in the kitchens for you.”

“Very good! But Lien must have something hot, first--there you are!”

Joséphine’s maid stumbled in, hair stuffed into a mobcap. She looked half asleep.

Napoleon clapped his hands. “Wake up! Your Empress must be dressed in thirty seconds.”

Joséphine always hated this part of Napoleon’s returns. He expected the same polished perfection, in a hundredth of the time it took to actually achieve it. Still, she somehow managed to stumble into her petticoat and short stays, while brushing rose salve over her lips, and was mostly dressed when Napoleon lost patience and said, imperiously, “Come!”

Privately thanking whatever good angel had convinced her it was now cold enough to sleep with stockings on, Joséphine seized the first pair of shoes she could find and tossed a, “Bring me a shawl, and the diamond set in the top left hand drawer!” over her shoulder.

“One month and Austria surrenders,” said Napoleon, cheerfully. “Ah, Joséphine! We shall be in London next winter. You may replant the gardens of Kew.”

The household was in the orderly disorder it always was when Napoleon was in residence. Gone was the serenity Joséphine preferred, and used to pacify the court, soothe diplomats, and impress Napoleon's enemies. It was like throwing a rock into a lake. There were servants and secretaries and messengers striding up and down the corridors, rooms thrown open and used at random.

“Fetch the emperor the Camembert from the kitchen,” said Joséphine, seizing a passing footman. “And the oolong for the dragon.”

“What should I brew it in, Your Majesty?” asked the footman, in understandable bewilderment. He was being dragged down the hall, away from the kitchen, in the strong gravitational wake of Napoleon on a mission.

“The bowls have not yet arrived from the silversmith?” Joséphine asked despairingly.

“No, Your Majesty, they were not expected until tomorrow.”

“Euh-- the... tubs we use for my roses during balls? No, those are wooden-- a bathtub?”

“Joséphine!”

She had fallen behind; Joséphine seized the shawl her bewildered maid was offering her, and raced to catch up.  Her maid was still clasping a diamond necklace about Joséphine’s throat when they made it through the cedar groves that separated the pavilion and rose garden from Malmaison.

“Lien!” exclaimed Napoleon. “Here is my wife, Joséphine, the only civilized person in my empire.”

“Have the footmen bring out the package from the silversmith, once they have brought out the tea,” Joséphine told her maid. The maid nodded, tweaked the fall of Joséphine’s shawls, and raced back to the house, by now fully awake.

The pavilion had come together very nicely. There were welcome banners on all the pillars, the stone floor had been ground to an even smoothness, and one of the Chinese sailors had even managed to make a cheerful string of red paper lanterns long enough to stretch over the side that overlooked the rose garden.

A voice came out of the darkness by the rose garden: “You may not stand upon ceremony, but civilized people do not wake each other in the night. This could have waited until morning.”

“I wanted the two of you to meet,” replied Napoleon.

An enormous white dragon came into the light: first her wedge-shaped head, with its glowing red eyes and long white whiskers, then her long neck, then the lithe body and enormous wings folded tight, then the long coils of her tail. Joséphine’s knees felt suddenly weak. She dipped into a curtsy, and would have curtsied lower still, if Napoleon still hadn’t been holding her hand.

Two silly thoughts warred in her head: ‘Thank God he is holding my hand,’ and ‘I am glad I asked for rubies.’

“It is-- it is--” Joséphine cleared her throat. “It is my honor to wait upon you, Madame Lien.”

Lien sat before them as a sphynx. She inclined her head. “You seem to have been at some pains to attend to my comfort.”

Joséphine rose from her curtsy. “Yes, madame. I had a banquet prepared for your arrival tomorrow. I apologize that I am only able to offer you tea this evening.”

“You see?” Lien turned to look at Napoleon, red eyes looking almost opaque from the side. “The pavilion at the Tuileries was sufficient. You need not have rushed me here.”

Napoleon chuckled. “So you say! But was this not a pleasant surprise?”

“There is a garden similar to this one in the Emperor of China’s summer palace,” Lien conceded, handsomely.

The servants were rushing out with a folding table and camp chairs, which they set up before the pavilion. What seemed like every kitchen maid in the household came afterwards, carting a copper bathtub full of tea.

“A curious bowl,” said Lien, sounding pleased.  “It is a design I have not seen before.”

Joséphine sank down into her chair with relief. Thank God Lien had not recognized it as a bathtub. A kitchen maid stuck a tray of cheese, bread, and grapes on the table. Joséphine leaned over and said, “Thank you! Convey my thanks to all the kitchen.” To Lien, Joséphine said, “I hope the pavilion and all the furnishings meet with your approval, Madame Lien. We cannot offer you all that you left in China, but I hope we may offer you some remembrances of home, while giving you all the best of the French Empire.”

“I cannot fault your taste or your consideration in the arrangement of my pavilion,” said Lien. “It is reassuring to see there are some in this country that have some sense of the necessities of civilization.” Then, after a pause, Lien said, in conciliatory accents, “But I am forgetting how young an empire this is. Your gown reminds me of the hanfu of the Tang dynasty.”

“I thank you, madame. I took the colors from the roses the Emperor was kind enough to send me from the Black Forest."

“The rose gardens here are Joséphine’s particular domain,” said Napoleon, now halfway through the Camembert. “Her rose clippings are the only things I allow past the blockades.”

Joséphine felt a wave of tenderness sweep over her. For all his faults, and for all their fights, there was real love between them, and in moments like these, it was easy to remember why, despite all the spats and infidelities, all the worries over infertility, all the stresses of government and Empire, she preferred being married to Napoleon to any other man in France.

“You cultivate many late blooming varieties,” said Lien.

Joséphine nodded. “Yes-- the more delicate of the early blooming roses have been moved into the greenhouse. I placed some Chinese roses about your pavilion.”

Lien paused at this and looked to the right and to the left.

“I hope they meet with your approval,” said Joséphine, when Lien did not respond. But by then the servants had returned again, exhausted but fully dressed. “Oh and for tomorrow’s festivities-- I beg your pardon for my ignorance of the Chinese fashion, but I thought, perhaps, you might have left your jewels in China....”

The servants impassively set the package before Lien and began untying the cloth about it.

“Ah Joséphine,” said Napoleon, approvingly, when the silver and ruby diadem was exposed to the flickering lantern light. “There is none to match you for elegance.”

Lien was still silent.

Joséphine suddenly felt as if she was Rose Tasher de la Plagerie once again, newly arrived from Martinique, gauche and awkward, and still mourning the loss of a beloved sister. It had been so hard not to cry at any show of fellow feeling from others.

“I think you have moved her, my friend,” said Napoleon, reaching over to tweak her ear. “Well done.”

“I am tired,” said Lien, in a low voice. “But I....” It appeared that it was not her way to thank people, or to accept sympathy.

Joséphine simply smiled and rose, saying, “I hope you will rest and find yourself at home in France. We are glad to have you, Madame, and you are most welcome.”

Lien put her head down on her crossed forelegs. Joséphine wondered if dragons could weep.

  
  


***

 

The celebration for Lien was a success, as all Joséphine’s parties tended to be. She was adept at hiding the chaos belowstairs, at putting out metaphorical fires as soon as they began, and at having her ladies separate anyone who looked likely to quarrel. (Mostly these were Bonapartes. Joséphine often felt that half her diplomatic duties were keeping members of Napoleon’s family from killing each other, or any innocent bystanders in the way.)

The Chinese citizens of Paris had proved disappointing, save for the silversmith’s wife, because white was the color of mourning. Albino dragons were apparently unlucky.

“Men are fools,” said the silversmith’s wife, who translated her name as Peony.

Though Joséphine privately agreed with this very broad assessment, she asked for some elaboration.

Peony drank her tea with her littlest finger upraised. She had to; the nail on that hand was extremely long. “Men think it unlucky. It tempts heaven to give you bad fortune. Same in speak of--” She frowned, corrected herself, “Same when speaking of babies. A good, fat, happy baby, you call thin and sickly. Do not tempt heaven! But I say-- I say, it is the will of heaven you have a good, fat baby. And so it is the will of heaven there is an albino Celestial.” Peony nodded and then leaned forward to say, confidentially. “Prince Yongxing is the best prince. He is the companion to Lien.”

“Was,” Joséphine corrected her, gently. “Prince Yongxing was killed by British forces.”

Peony was outraged, and could only express her feelings in a flood of incomprehensible Cantonese to her husband, who then conveyed this complaint in what seemed to be its entirety to the Chinese men who had not fled. Peony then upbraided them all until everyone lay face-down in the grass before Lien’s pavilion.

“She did not expect me to do that, did she?” asked Hortense, as Lien looked with satisfaction over her line of suppliants. “I only curtsied.”

“As did I,” said Joséphine.

Napoleon had noticed the bows with satisfaction and interrupted, “Joséphine, you are an Empress. You bow only to me. Hortense, your eldest is my heir. You bow to me, your mother, and your husband. Come--” holding his hand out to Joséphine “-- we must talk to Talleyrand.”

Joséphine talked very little with Lien, and went over only when the fireworks had begun.

“You are a most gracious Empress,” Lien said.

“I thank you. I hope you will ask me for anything you need.” Then, quietly, “I-- that is-- I hope you know, Madame Lien, that your goals are my goals, and your successes my successes. I cannot... I cannot convey how much I wish for you to be happy here.”

Lien stared up at the fireworks. It was not until the end that she said, “In China, it was the relationship between dragon and companion that defined the course of a life.”

Joséphine did not know what to say. She would rather a dragon then the horrible succession of mistresses, all younger and more fertile than her. But this seemed foolish to speak aloud. She settled for, “My condolences on your loss, Madame.”

 

***

 

“You have reorganized your ladies-in-waiting,” said Napoleon, when they were drinking tea in Joséphine’s sitting room. Hortense sat with Eugène by the fire, catching up on all that had passed in the month they had been apart.

Joséphine changed the subject with a, “Yes, I did not wish to have ladies about me afraid of dragons. Two of them went out to assist Madame Lien in dressing this evening-- I think it was wise to set the rubies in silver. I had heard silver is more valued in China.”

“It is.”

“I have been longing to ask you--” leaning forward to take his hand in hers “--how can you march thirty miles in one day? I cannot conceive of moving so vast a distance in so little time!”

This distracted him for a time, and it was extremely pleasant to talk as a family-- just her, her children, and her husband-- over the adventures Napoleon and Eugène had undergone. Eugène was roused to real eloquence over Lien’s reforms.

It was only after a maid entered to take away the tea tray that Napoleon recalled he had been speaking of something else. “To return to my point. You reorganized your ladies in waiting.”

“Madame de Rémusat and I thought there were too many,” said Joséphine. “With the expenses in building the pavilions, I thought it best....” Then, trying to keep the jealousy and rage from her voice she added, “Mademoiselle de Vaudey resigned her post before the coronation, if that is whom you meant to ask about. She was extremely dissatisfactory.”

Napoleon was in too good a mood to be annoyed at the memory of the last, vicious fight they had been in, over his affair with Mademoiselle de Vaudey.  “Ah, Joséphine,” he said, affectionately, tweaking her ear. “I asked because Madame Lien needs attendants. You are Empress of my heart still. You must not resent all the subprefectures.”

But she did, and she resented them dreadfully. Such, Joséphine thought, with a forced, close-mouthed smile, were the crotchets of a barren woman with an ambitious husband. She had made herself invaluable, and yet, at any moment she might find herself replaced by a womb.  

Hortense and Eugène both saw this and moved forward.

“Mama, what was that tea we were all drinking?” asked Eugène. “Madame Lien told me the name of it but I could not pronounce it correctly. I think she almost laughed!”

“Oolong,” Joséphine replied, moving so that he could sit beside her on the divan. Eugène  and Hortense were such sweet children, so intent on her happiness. That, one must suppose, was what came of having a boor for a biological father, and a childhood marked by having one’s mother unjustly thrown into prison. They had been so shaken, had so clung to Joséphine when she had been released from prison, and even now that they did not cling to her, they seemed determined to divert any unhappiness from her path.

Hortense took the spot instead, and wrapped her arms around Joséphine’s shoulders. “Do you not think all of Mama’s preparations for Madame Lien were lovely, father? She has been so hard at work I have only seen her at dinner these three weeks and more!”

“Indeed,” said Napoleon. “And how much expense was incurred in all these preparations?”

He scolded Joséphine when she showed him the bills, but it was playful. Joséphine was relieved. Every so often Napoleon would fling her bills around the room in a rage.

Joséphine said, smilingly, “I know something of what it is like to leave behind a home you will never see again-- and we could not celebrate so great a victory on water and stale bread. You cannot fault me for these expenditures.”

Napoleon tweaked her ear again-- the fourth time in one day! He was extremely pleased with her-- and said, “My friend, let it be ever thus-- with your debts the only thing to come between us.”

Joséphine thought, ‘Oh yes, my debts! Not your manhood!’ but said this only to Madame de Rémusat.

Madame de Rémusat shook her head. “That is the unfairness of the world. We are given so little power, and men still force us to fight each other.”

This struck Joséphine forcefully, and taking Madame de Rémusat’s candle, she said, “I must go see to Madame Lien before I retire. Tell my guard to follow at ten paces.”

Lien was still awake, though the hour was late. She stared up at the moon and seemed to be writing something with a claw dipped in ink.

“Madame Lien?” Joséphine sank into a deep curtsy, head bowed. She stayed there for so long, she began to think, idly, that she ought to have her diadem re-set. She was very moment more certain it would tumble from her hair, which suggested some fault in the distribution of diamonds--

“Empress Joséphine,” said Lien. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Joséphine rose. It was hard to read draconic faces, but she rather thought Lien found her grace and manners pleasing. “I wished to be certain you were still comfortable, Madame. And I wished....”

Lien curled her tail around her forelegs, as a dowager duchess might rearrange the train of her gown.

Joséphine raised her large, hazel eyes to Lien’s red ones. “I wished to assure you, Madame, that I, personally, am glad of your presence, and glad of the friendship you have shown to my husband.”

“You are ever gracious,” said Lien. “But when I spoke before, it was of my Prince.”

Joséphine thought she might feel relieved, but she didn’t. Merely sad. Tears pricked at her eyes. Lien’s tone was so hollow--

“My name was Rose,” Joséphine said, a propos of nothing.

Lien had been staring up at the moon again, and now turned to look at her.

“Before I married Napoleon,” said Joséphine, staring at her distant rose garden. “I was Rose.”

“And now you are a patroness of them,” said Lien, graciously.

“It is kind of you to say so. Every moment I spend in my garden, I am more conscious of the gaps in my knowledge.” She hesitated and turned to Lien, pulling tight her shawl. “Madame, we are a new Empire, and, I fear, uncivilized. I beg you will forgive us our faults, and help us to grow.”

Lien smiled. “It appears I, too, am become a patroness of roses.”

 


End file.
